Football has eaten itself. The bubble will soon burst and the vultures are circling

I’ve been thinking about writing this article for some time and simply not found the time, but the situation at Aston Villa gave me the final push I needed.

I’m finding myself more and more frustrated with the way money is impacting the game I love.

It’s felt to me that it’s been spiralling out of control for some time and perhaps Villa will be the turning point.

It all started when Sky started injecting huge sums of cash into the game. Only a fool would think this is out of the goodness of their hearts – it’s always been about return on investment.

The emphasis on the Premier League has always been too great and disproportionate, leading to a mad scramble to get at the money in order to compete with those already there and benefiting from its rewards. This is epitomised by the Play-Off final itself, where the difference between winning and losing is staggering. In Villa’s case could prove fatal.

It’s just not right.

Of course, Sky is only one small part of the mix. We now have BT Sport throwing money around and Amazon wading in too, not to mention international rights and sponsorship.

If managed more even-handedly it could be of huge benefit for the entire football league and even grassroots football.

If handled correctly it could see new tech allowing greater access to people online at accessible pricing, although I fear the live game may suffer a similar fate as the high street with online shopping. (Although watching live football is far more enjoyable than trudging round shops, well, most of the time at least!).

If you look at the teams in the Premier League, it seems the case that very few are actually stable for any length of time, the rest inevitably fall from their rise and end up in financial difficulty.

When you add to that mix, clubs being run in what are frankly unprofessional and foolhardy ways it becomes a toxic mix.

However poorly worded – and make no mistake it was – Delia and Michael’s article in The Times was, I’d like to think, their way of trying to convey this same point.

Football clubs are businesses. To my mind, they should be operated as such and they should have to be sustainable, to be ethical, to be fair, to be self-funding and to at least aim to break even without having to have huge amounts of cash injected to bail them out.

No other business would be run this way and if they did at some point they would fail when sales dried up or the investors failed to see a return on their investment. This is the crux of the problem at Villa – in essence, they adopted a high-risk investment strategy and it’s backfired and when it’s become obvious the return on investment isn’t there. The investors have essentially cut their losses. This may end up in a fire sale in the best case and liquidation in the worst.

And what of these so-called Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations, I’d suggest that when a second tier club is being bailed out to the tune of £5-6 million pounds per month they’re not fit for purpose and are utterly farcical.

Surely it must be time for change. No longer should we make the Premier League prize so attractive that clubs are willing to risk all to get there and damn the consequences.

There must be new rules and regulations to ensure clubs are run fairly and sensibly. There simply must be increased checks on potential owners of clubs and their intentions and rules for how they inject cash into a club.

I don’t give a monkey’s where they’re from. I do, however, care about their behaviour and where their cash has come from and their intentions for the club they own. Private companies should practice ethically, we should all insist upon it both in and out of football. FFP should mean exactly that.

Alas, the vultures have been circling football’s carcass for some time, agents and players have been earning obscene amounts of money from it. I can’t say I blame them, but it’s more fuel on the fire of what used to be a game that felt accessible.

Along with new rules and regs I also feel like perhaps football needs to look at wage caps and wage structures within clubs and relate them more closely to their operating budget.

Another area of the game that feels like it is hugely out of control is transfers. Both in terms of fees for players and their agents. Transfers windows do not help this, they squeeze the activity and often lead to inflated prices and panic buying. It’s like a desperate parent trying to find that must-have toy at Christmas!

And this brings me to what originally made me want to write this article: Is about time we did away with transfer fees altogether?

‘You’re crazy’ I hear you say. Well. you wouldn’t be the first to say and I’ve most certainly been called worse, but think about it for a second.

Imagine, instead of huge transfer fees players simply negotiated a contract with a club with an agreed notice period. The notice period could change depending on the length of the contract or the importance of the player, for example.

Detractors will say that it would leave clubs too exposed to change, but that again depends on the contract length and notice period. Or perhaps that transfer fees are essential for smaller clubs to make money, but again I’d argue that is better solved with a fairer distribution of wealth.

Perhaps clubs should have stricter rules on their squad sizes and proportion of players that are available to the first team. Perhaps they should have to have a certain percentage of youth players in that squad.

What really saddens me about all of this is that it’s fixable. If only the will was there.

It will never happen, the status quo is too ingrained, too many would stand to lose too much cash and sadly their influence reaches beyond football into global politics (I’ll stop short of debating neoliberalism), but it’s certainly food for thought.

My fear, however, is that the beautiful game has been irrevocably changed by something far more ugly.

I should say that I don’t think money has been all bad for the game, far from it, but things are out of control. Football is also far from the only area that needs looking into either, ticket touting being another personal bugbear of mine – another area that needs dramatic change.

So what do you think? What measures do you think are needed? What changes would you like to see happen? Or are you happy with the way things are? I’d love to see your thoughts comments below.

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Comments

Excellent thoughts from a very sad lifelong Villa fan.
I love Villa and hate the Premier League and its influence. Clubs no longer belong to their supporters, players have no loyalties, agents are parasitic worms. Can we reclaim our lost game? How ironic – the founders of the Football League in this situation.

So right, I agree completely, another symptom of this greed is the effect that this plutocracy has had upon our homegrown players, when Aston Villa won the Football League, The European Cup, the European Super Cup and were runners-up in the World Team Trophy they did it with an all British team, today many of the top clubs barely have any home players in their teams at all!

I will be honest I have not thought this through in depth, to see pitfalls etc. if I did this article would long forgotten about for me to reply.

Certainly money should be far better spread out. to the lower leagues . As it stands many if not all clubs in Leagues 1&2 rely on a good cup run playing a crowd drawing team. Raising a player to sell on for a profit. This often fails to raise enough, as those with the money often tries and out do the smaller club with smaller transfer fees.. These clubs cannot survive on just gate money from 2-5 thousand paying supporters.

Would a graded wage cap on each league work ? No more than 40k in the prem and reducing down the leagues. The same with transfers having a ceiling level ?

I would stop the bigger clubs like Chelsea buying the best young talent just to stop other rivals having them.

I don’t know the finer workings of the business side it . but something has to be done, or in years to come there will only be one league in the UK

Absolutely agree, money has ruined football as we used to know it, we read that a player has just demanded 1. 25 mil per week , what sort of nonsense is that. And Harry Kane good as he is has just been offered a new contract with 90 mil, as far as I am concerned it’s way out of hand and if something serious isn’t done soon it will destroy the game completely.

I have many friends who have lost all interest in the game and that includes Man City supporters, I’ve been a supporter for over 50 years but sad to say I could easily just forget the whole thing. Sad or what.

Colin I know many like your friends, some of my old city mates are watching Kings Lynn and Dereham. I just walked away after 50 something years . It was not my club anymore, I felt despite soundbites I didn’t matter anymore, the club looked behind me and saw a queue for my ticket. Looking at the £ signs instead of a loyal fan

“Football clubs are businesses. To my mind, they should be operated as such and they should have to be sustainable, to be ethical, to be fair, to be self-funding and to at least aim to break even without having to have huge amounts of cash injected to bail them out.

No other business would be run this way and if they did at some point they would fail when sales dried up or the investors failed to see a return on their investment.”

—

A lot of businesses run in debt, often purposefully so. Cash in hand can be seen as a wasted opportunity and open to the tax man. Amazon is the most well known that rarely turns a profit, always reporting revenue. This same approach worked well for us in our Adams / Neil season, running at a debt of a few million to earn 10m’s of additional revenue.

The crux of the issue that makes Football unique, is that every year only three teams can succeed. There are rarely, if ever, such absolute restrictions on other industries.

Amazon makes a tidy profit, just clever reporting to avoid tax, amongst other things. It wouldn’t have been able to attract so much investment and disrupt so many markets if not. Dear Jeff isn’t exactly on the breadline!

I am a Aston Villa supporter and, without being a ‘told you so’, I could see this mess emerging on the horizon months ago. Perhaps, there were conditions for a so-called ‘perfect storm’. We had an over eager billionaire owner, historical long and costly contracts already in place and a manager more than ready to add further financial burden (even if he was allowed to). If it wasn’t high fees we paid, it was the high wages incurred with each and every old timer we engaged…..

Despite all of this self-induced harm, the killer factor in many respects has been the huge discrepancy between Premier League and Championship income. Villa has just not cut it’s cloth accordingly. However, I doubt we will be the last club to falter and it will always a challenge for those sides moving between the two tiers.

I think the pressure to be in the top flight has led to desperation to survive. This in turn has led to negative football outside the ‘big six’ with the primary aim being not to lose.

As for those sides aspiring to make the leap up, especially those who are receiving parachute payments, there is a real challenge to rein in the expenses, whilst still trying to pursue promotion. Despite contractual conditions that may reduce player salaries following relegation, the relative costs for a former Premier League side against those of a journeyman Championship side bear no comparison.

I am not defending Villa’s situation because there has clearly been a big gamble has gone badly wrong. However, this sorry tale has only acted to highlight the issues you have raised.

Whether a transfer free world would remedy the position, I am not altogether sure. It would have to be a ‘world’ shift, so the chances of gaining a collective will to change will almost certainly mean it will never happen.

It will be interesting to see if the Amazon pilot works, where there will be little, if any, charge to Prime customers to watch live football. Might this scupper Sky?

The money element in the game has certainly got way out of hand. Will the bubble eventually burst? I suspect it will, given time.

I’m pretty sure that given enough time the financial bubble of the Premier League will eventually burst.
Not being a contributor to any of Sky; BT; or Amazon Prime, I feel that I cannot be held responsible!!!
But, what has happened to FFP? Does it not apply in the Premier League? If it does, can someone please explain to me how a club like Bournemouth with a capacity of only 11,360 and season tickets costing from GBP550 to GBP650 are able to manage and pay “average” Premier League wages?
It certainly seems to me that they must employ some rather clever and creative accountants.

I will be short. I applaud this article. As a Villa fan whose great great grandad was a season ticket holder. It makes you embarrassed for what Tony Xia did but this is the problem that the Premier League has created. There are 8-10 clubs who make gobs of money and will now always get the silverware while 10-12 clubs battle not to be in the bottom 3. 80 other club suffer dismal financial outlooks. It is the history of not just the game but of this country they are taking and throwing in the dustbin. The only way to really combat this is with a salary cap. That would make the playing field more even in distribution. The expectations of players wages would already be known. It is the only way to have a competitive competition. The big 8 teams will fight it but by doing this you save the other 84 plus professional sides in our country. To see Villa Leeds Rangers etc… go through this is only the tip of the iceberg. The Prem and Sky’s money is killing off our football. It has to change. NOW!!!

Should be a complete even distribution of cash over the 92 clubs. Win
PL get 92mill…… Come bottom of league 2 win £1m.
Should be cap on match day tickets.
Certain allocation of academy players in match day squad.
Managers only allowed to change within transfer window.

The problem, as you’ve eloquently pointed out, is that even though many people can see that money is killing the game, those that make the decisions are getting their cut from the gravy train, and won’t make unprofitable yet necessary decisions.

Clubs like Norwich are increasingly isolated because they retain some semblance of club identity. Many others have already sold this off to corporate hegemony and stand for nothing in their local communities.

I lost interest in football in general a long time ago because of the money breeding a lack of competitiveness but can’t shake my love for Norwich. And as much as I feel “meh” about the England team, I’m actually looking forward to the World Cup because it’s less corrupted by money (in terms of on the pitch anyway!)

“Not being a contributor to any of Sky; BT; or Amazon Prime, I feel that I cannot be held responsible”

Exactly so, nor me.

The only way the bubble will burst is if sufficient people stop subscribing. Sadly, even when times are hard, that’s not an option many people seem to consider, and even if they do the companies concerned use all sorts of dirty tricks to make it very difficult to achieve without a lot of determination.

As I feel I could write indefinitely on the problems of football I will keep it short and sweet. The warning signs have been there for many a year but greed has destroyed the game we once loved. Football will indeed continue to implode and destroy itself as more and more alienated supporters drift away and find themselves something more meaningful to do. Supporting affordable local football has been a good option for myself. Despite possessing a Norwich City season ticket I have found time to go and watch Dereham Town and Kings Lynn and unless I see some drastic changes in the way football is run in the near future I can see myself giving up my NCFC season ticket sooner rather than later.

They can all F-off as far as I’m concerned. There should be no hand outs, help outs, mitigating circumstances, extra time, nothing. All the 5hit that comes out when a club is in trouble – “it’s a community club, what about the fans” etc is just bull5hit. The gravy train is brimming over with clubs clambering up, trying to hang on while blinkered fans largely get driven over the top of and taken the pi$$ out of. Look at the wages of players, executives, agents. There needs to be a huge reality check but i fear it will not come for many a year.

I’ve lost interest in the professional game, it’s not even particularly attractive to watch anyway – mostly attritional with few shots and even fewer shots actually on target.
And where is the wing play? (tongue in cheek deliberately sounding like an old codger- but secretly meaning it ?).

I’d sooner watch my boy’s U10’s and U12’s on a Sunday to see what real football is all about.

The Premiership is a private club run exclusively for 5 or 6 teams who need 14 or so others to provide canon fodder. The real competition is in the Championship and below but the finances of these clubs are in the main difficult or in my teams case unsustainable.
Sky etc are sucking all the joy out of the game and proving that money will corrupt and eventually destroy all that we held dear, the people’s game? UTV

Once large amounts of TV money came in the die was cast and like it or not we are ultimately going to end up with a franchise system similar to the American systems.
The bumble won’t burst the big investors will get together and protect themselves through the franchise system.
The only way we will then see premiership football in Norwich is very wealthy person buying a franchise.
If people think the playing field is not level they are correct. However, the old system heavily favoured big cities with large attendances. All that has happened is TV money has replaced turnstile money but unfortunately to a greater extent as we all now contribute to the coffers of the big clubs.

Why is it Sky’s fault, the game we watch today is arguably more attractive, has better players, is a safer environment and more widely available. I don’t live anywhere near Norwich but I can watch Norwich on my TV, my phone, my laptop or games console and next season I have 8 more live games. For those of us who can’t travel or don’t have green tinted spectacles it’s much better than it was. Yes wages are high and admission expensive but how a club chooses to spend its money is not down to Sky, BT or Amazon, it’s down to the club and their owners. I can give you a list as long as my arm of non-football businesses that have stretched themselves in the pursuit of glory (or greed). What shall we go back to one match on a Sunday, MOTD and some fleeting highlights on a random channel at midnight. This ‘it ain’t as good as it used to be’ is clouded by nostalgia, yep there’s problems but don’t wrote the game off yet.

Personally I think one match on a Sunday, MOTD and some fleeting highlights would be a gargantuan step in the right direction. Then we might see more British players actually involved at the highest level in the country, which in turn would lead to better performances at international level.

Really and go back to the 70’s, the money would go elsewhere, La Liga, Ligue 1 etc, the best players would follow. Kids don’t want to watch crap, they want Ali, De Byrne, Kane etc. The internet and FIFA games introduce them to superstars and they want to see them

I don’t disagree there’s been improvements and didn’t say it was all sky’s fault. It did begin there, however. I’m not one for nostalgia, change is inevitable, but it’s also true that change can go both ways.

Problem is, its a global game. Its not the Premier League thats ruined football – although it hasnt helped – but the Champions League – a competition where you dont have to win anything to be in it, but you do have to have an obscene amount of money already to be successful (and in most countries, appear in it)

The FA could – and should – have stood up to the big clubs and told them to get lost. They should have also told UEFA to do one following the Heysel ban, and set up their own competition, However the lure of money – including a significant amount going into grass roots, even if its a small percentage – won over and the cash cow was born.

It wont change here whilst the likes of Liverpool, Spurs, Chelsea, Arsenal, Man U and Man C are still involved in the domestic game. They see their peers as Barca, Real Madrid and Bayern, not Brighton, Southampton and Bournemouth. The Premier League is purely a qualification league for the real big money – same as the Championship is purely a warm up for the Premier League

Unfortunately the top clubs dont care about even other PL clubs going under, nor about their league being competitive. The only hope for most clubs is that they get noticed by a Sheik Mansour rather than a Xia or a Marcus Evans. Trouble is you dont know which you’re going to get until its too late….

Watching MOTD again beause of course I am. The first goal made by an overlapping Byram making space for an advancing Tettey, that's right Tettey to take the ball wide, cross to win the corner. Hard to pick an MoM but Tettey was immense after so little football #ncfc

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